ST. GEORGE, Utah — Marking the 10-year anniversary of when 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College students disappeared southwest of Mexico City, Utah Tech University is commemorating the victims’ lives with “Remember the 43 Students” art installations and campus engagement events.  

As part of the Sept. 26, 2014, incident, local police, state police, Mexican military personnel and members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel ambushed five buses of students from the Rural Teachers College and another bus carrying a third-division soccer team. In addition to the 43 students who forcibly disappeared during that night of political violence, six people were killed and more than 40 were wounded. In the ten years since the atrocity, only three of the 43 students have been confirmed dead. The 43 students are a small fraction of the more than 105,000 people who have been forcibly disappeared in Mexico since 2006. 

“As the tenth anniversary of the atrocity approaches, standing in support of justice is even more important,” said Stephen Lee, organizer of the installation and dean of Utah Tech’s College of Humanities & Social Sciences. “I hope that visitors will engage in the complex issues of political violence and economic inequalities, continue to focus on the 43 lost students and see themselves in the 43.” 

UT’s tribute to the 43 students will open with the return of two art installations to campus. Jan Nimmo’s “¿Dónde Están? (Where Are They?),” which features portraits of the 43 students, will be on display in the lobby of Utah Tech’s Dolores Doré Eccles Fine Arts Center. Nimmo, who traveled extensively in Guerrero prior to the disappearances to document the work of local artisans, created the series of portraits to raise awareness and emphasize the human faces of the victims. 

Additionally, the “Remember the 43 Students,” which was created by Lee and features 43 life-sized silhouettes bearing the photo, name and brief biography of each of the students, will be on display inside the main entrance of UT’s Holland Centennial Commons. Both art installations will be on display Sept. 13 through Oct. 4.

To mark the opening of both art installations, an opening ceremony will take place at noon on Sept. 16 in the Eccles lobby.  

Later that evening, the film of “XLIII: A Contemporary Requiem,” a music and dance production that remembers the 43 students and other victims of political violence, will be screened at 6 p.m. on Sept. 16 in UT’s Dunford Auditorium in the Browning Learning Resource Center. The production was created in 2015 by composer Andrés Solis and choreographer Sandra Milena Gómez as part of Solis’ and Gómez’s residency at Montalvo Arts Center in California in collaboration with Scot Hanna-Weir, director of choral activities at Santa Clara University.

Solis and Hanna-Weir will then speak at 4 p.m. on Sept. 17 in the Zion Room on the fifth floor of UT’s Holland Centennial Commons. Their talk, “Ten Years After Ayotzinapa: Despair, Memorials, and Art,” reflects on the creation of the “XLIII Requiem” and the ongoing impact of the 43 tragedy in Mexico.

The “Remember the 43 Students” art installations and events are open to the community. More information about Utah Tech’s commemoration as well as the students’ forced disappearance are available at www.rememberthe43students.com.  

###